The great problem of India is the population problem: John Kenneth Galbraith

"A friend once told me about seeing Noel Coward off to Jamaica," writes John A Kenneth Galbraith in his autobiography, A Life In Our Times, published recently, where Coward was going to write his memoirs. He asked him if he had an abundance of notes and records. "No," Coward replied, "I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me."

Galbraith would nose out any elephant when it comes to memories - his ambassadorship in India 20 years ago, Nehru and Krishna Menon, Roosevelt and Kennedy, Henry Luce and Harvard. But he has always combined a writer's eye for people and things with an intellectual's concern for the grander themes of life.

In a quiet chat, unusually quiet for a man who is 6ft 7 in and loves the sound of his own booming voice, with Economics Editor Jay Dubashi, Galbraith, who is beginning to show his 73 years, spoke about Nehru and Reagan, China and Japan, but also, about poverty and family planning and, his latest concern, the deadly armaments business. Excerpts:

Q. One thing I have always wanted to ask you. You wear so many caps, you are an economist, agricultural scientist, writer, diplomat, novelist, and all that. Now, which cap do you like best?A. Oh, I consider myself an economist and a writer I've taught all my life, but if I ever had a choice between the problems of the students and problems of my own. if I ever had the choice between the thesis of some graduate student and my own writing. I never hesitated. I always favoured my own.

Q. And a teacher, afterwards?A. And after that a teacher, a diplomat, a politician, but those were always digressions from what I've considered my main activity in life.

Q. What are you writing now?A. I started last year to write a book called the Great Conservative Revolt - a book of criticism - basic criticism of the Reagan Administration, but I had to abandon it because all the things I said, all of my criticism came true before the book was published. I was writing about the great basic conflict between the supply-siders and the monetarists and that was a fairly novel idea when - I wrote it last spring but now it is completely tedious.

Now I'm about half-way through, on a book on the nature of power. It's always been of interest to me, how power is exercised in the modern community, and in the international community and I've taken the subject apart into its components and shown how the various combinations of power, or use of force, have come together and how they are related in the modern society and how, generally speaking, useless are the customary references to political power and economic power because they disguise the reality.

Q. You've also been interested in poverty?A. Poverty, yes. Well, I haven't done any more work on that. I must tell you that my book on poverty produced the strongest single set of criticisms I've ever had in my life. When I said that migration from the poor countries to the rich countries was a good thing, I invited the universal condemnation of both the countries - those from which the people are coming and to which they are going. And yet one of the great facts is that this migration continues in a massive form. And nobody's going to stop it because you'd have to have a policeman every ten feet along the border.

Q. But then, haven't you had this kind of migration throughout history?A. And this is another incredibly important thing. If you look back at migration, it's always a good thing. If you look forward on it, it's always a bad thing. Ex-ante is good, ex-post is bad. I used to advise Indian students - I've had a great many Indian students over the years and a great many have come to me for advice and one of the common things they came for advice - was where they should make their living. I used to one time, solemnly tell them that they should go back to their home country. Now I tell them they should go wherever the pay is highest because that's what they're going to do anyway!

Q. You have talked about the culture of poverty, and the adjustment away from this culture of poverty as a main factor in development.A. This I regard as exceedingly important, that people who have lived in poverty for generations and centuries accommodate to it. It is very important that that accommodation be attacked first and the way of attacking that accommodation is by mass general education. This, in turn, I have come to regard as the important first step in economic development. And, you know, I think I was very much influenced on this whole subject by India. In fact I was overwhelmingly influenced by it. Because you can assess the progressive parts of India by those where (he literacy is highest and where people break with the culture of poverty and either improve their position in the area itself or. more likely, leave it.

"People listen, and they always say how well things are going in China and how badly things are going in India and that's to be attributed to the genius of Indian propaganda for bringing out everything that is bad."

The Middle East is being taken over by people from Kerala who have broken with the culture of poverty in Kerala because it's the most literate state in the Union.

Q. But you can't have literacy without resources, without money, without schools, without teachers isn't this a question of chicken and egg first?A. Yes, absolutely, and that's exactly what I have been saying, it's literacy that comes first. We had our sequential priorities wrong. We thought we could start with capital investment; we should have started with investment in education. I'm not being critical of India here, because the Indian instinct was always in favour of cultural investment, of educational investment. But when once gets to some of the newer African countries, their tendency is to emphasise capital investment in a community where there is mass illiteracy and very little technical education. This is not a chicken-and-egg case: I would be quite categorical in saying that it is the choice of how scarce resources are used and they should be used for human development.

Q. You have been to China. How do you contrast and compare the whole pattern of development in China with that in India?A. The Chinese, more than Europeans, more than Americans or Indians, have the oldest experience in organisation and management and government. And therefore there is a capacity for organised effort in China, which does not exist in the more liberal and more individualistic communities such as India. But having said that, a case could be made that India has-successfully solved her problems as China has hers, I don't think, for example, that anywhere in China has there been the kind of agricultural revolution that India has had in the Punjab and in the north-west generally.

The Chinese have a greater capacity for praising their accomplishments, which is matched by the Indian capacity for deprecating their accomplishments. And people listen, and they always say how well things are going in China and how badly things are going in India and that's to be attributed to the genius of Indian propaganda for bringing out everything that is bad.

Q. Apart from this self-deprecating habit we have got, there is a general feeling that we have not done as well as we could have. What do you think is our major weakness?A. Oh, population problem. No question about that. I was talking about this with the President last night. When you consider that India still adds the whole population of Australia every year it is an appalling thing. The great problem of India is the population problem, there should be no doubt about that. When I have said that, I come into an area of personal ambiguity because as an old-fashioned liberal, I cannot say that any compulsion should be brought to bear. It is of course possible to argue that Indian population policy has not been consistent over the years and has looked too much for miracles.

Q. In your lectures you have talked about the consistent flow of advice from the rich countries to the Third World. What do you think about the developing countries coming together?A. I'm very much in favour of that. I would like to be very specific, however. I would like to see the South-South countries - idiotic expression - I would like to see the poor countries come together in a compact not to buy arms from the rich countries. I have given up on the notion of hoping that we could persuade ourselves and the Soviet Union not to sell arms. And a boycott is always more effective than sanctions anyway. So what I'm arguing foils that the poor countries of the world come together in a concerted effort to boycott the purchase of arms.

Q. Do you think this is possible?A. I'm not sure if it is possible, but it would be salutary. It would be an extraordinarily good thing to have a large convocation of the poor countries in the world here in Delhi to discuss the question of cutting down on arms purchases.

Q. Can we come to the question of Indo-American relations? I find there is a certain coolness between New Delhi and Washington...A. Well, this is a problem that has to be resolved on several levels. There is a continuing permanent sympathy between the broad liberal community in the United States and India. This hasn't changed appreciably over the years. This is a sympathetic relationship which is based on a wide area of appreciation of Indian culture, Indian history, Indian art, Indian architecture and the companion relationship which is made between countries that have broadly similar political structures, parliamentary government. And this is far more important than the superficial difficulties that arise between governments.

I'll tell you a story which has always impressed me. When I was here as ambassador, some position would be taken by the Indian Government at the United Nations or on some other issue. And I'd get telegrams at the American Embassy saying that the United States Government is deeply disturbed over the position recently taken by Jawaharlal Nehru or Krishna Menon or whoever and I'd shove them into the waste-paper basket, because it meant that six bureaucrats back in Washington were disturbed ... six, at the very most, two or three of whom I didn't get along well with anyway and they would have the ego to say that they were the United States Government.

Q. So you think that this coolness in the relationship is basically at the Government level?A. It's all at the Government level, sure. It afflicts, a maximum of ten people, no more.

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